Innovation Challenge

Spinverse in Search of Russian Start-Ups with Global Potential

30 May 2013

Spinverse participated at the Skolkovo Village Start-Up event May 26-28th as an official Conference Sponsor

The gathering held in the “Russian Silicon Valley” Skolkovo in the outskirts of Moscow attracted some 3000 international participants, entrepreneurs, financiers, advisors, industrial companies etc. The importance of this first annual conference was confirmed by a high-level official participation, with the Prime Minister of Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev visiting the event to interact directly with people who are transforming Russia’s industrial profile.

Spinverse attended two Start-Up pitching sessions devoted to energy-related start-ups, aiming to identify two projects with best international commercialization potential. In fact, with Martti Husu and Mikko Kaarela working in two pitching session juries and listening to nearly 50 presentations we saw a whole host of exciting start-up projects, all with extremely high level of technical competence and new ideas.

On the other hand, many of the jury members pointed out that while getting to international markets is an absolute necessity to succeed – also in the domestic Russian market.

Typically, the Russian technology start-ups lack

Understanding of the technology adoption process of international companies,

Find it difficult to formulate their message for different stakeholders in the prospective customers’ organization and

Do not possess the pre-existing credibility, brand and trusted contacts to open doors to international customers and other business partners.

To alleviate the above challenges, Spinverse granted two awards for biggest potential on international markets. Spinverse will provide each of the two winners one million rubles forth of Go-to-Market consulting services to help them establish necessary contacts with prospective customers, partners and financiers in their international target markets.